SC Week 5/1: Arkell - JB (Half-Open Files)
"… the minority attack … is no more or less than a method of weakening an otherwise sound pawn set-up by advancing pawns at it."
Michael Stean
Since Stean uses a larger than usual number of game fragments in this chapter we’re going to have a few spare days.
So I thought I’d start Half Open Files week, with a nod to Keith Arkell’s Perpetual Chess interview.
As usual with Ben Johnson’s podcast it’s a great listen, but it’s particularly relevant for Simple Chess because Arkell in it mentions the book as the place he first learned about the minority attack. Keith is famous in British chess for having pretty much turned this strategy into a guaranteed win - regardless of what your engine might tell you.
Arkell - JB, 2013
25 Qc2
One of the least sensible decision of my chess career to date was voluntarily taking on Keith on the black side of a queen gambit declined exchange variation. After 25 moves I got a perfectly decent position. Objectively speaking, anyway. The trouble is it came with the permanent disadvantages of a weak pawn on c6 and an outpost on c5
And in these positions Arkell just plays and plays and plays until he wins.
Not that I troubled him too much in the game. I blundered with 25 ... h5 which immediately loses a pawn to 26 Na4.
I had been distracted by the possibility of sacrificing a pawn to get a 3v4 pawns on the same side rook ending - I was studying them in depth at the time. I really wanted to do it but at the same time I knew it couldn’t possibly be justified from an objective point of view.
As Keith said to me after the game, … c5 is definitely better than … h5 but there are plenty of other moves that are better than both. … Ba3 for instance.
Of course, I’d have lost anyway. If you’re interested Keith talks about how he approaches these kinds of positions in the interview. It’s very much worth your time before we get back to Simple Chess and half-open files tomorrow.
Thanks for posting - I remember Keith Arkell from playing against him (or possibly his brother?) in the Birmingham leagues back in the late 1970s or early 1980s when I was a teenager(I think I lost, naturally as they were both very strong players). I will look up the interview - this is the first I'd heard of the minority attack. I also used to have a book by Michael Steen, I think on the Sicilian Najdorf, which I really liked. (I sold most of my chess books a bit later after about 10 years of club/league/county play after deciding I had spent too much time playing the game, and that I needed to focus on other things for a while).
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment Patrick. Yes, Keith's brother was very strong too. Over 200 ECF grade iirc.
ReplyDeleteYou're right - Stean's other book was a very highly regarded monograph on the Najdorf. I got a copy of it only recently. Obviously the theory has moved on a great deal but it's still a decent introduction to the structures and general themes, I'd say.